Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials,

where we revisit past episodes for the

most potent and actionable science-based

tools for mental health, physical

health, and performance.

I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor

of neurobiology and opthalmology at

Stanford School of Medicine. Today we

are going to discuss how we

conceptualize grief both at an emotional

and at a logical level. I'm going to

teach you about the neuroscience and the

psychology of grief and incredible

findings that have been made in just a

few key laboratories that point to the

fact that we essentially map our

experience of people in three

dimensions. I'll just give you a little

hint of what those dimensions are. They

relate to space, where people are, time,

when people are, I'll explain what that

means, and a dimension called closeness.

and how those three dimensions of space,

time, and closeness are what establish

very close bonds with people and are

what require remapping, reorganization

within our emotional framework and our

logical framework when we lose somebody

for whatever reason. The important thing

to point out is that grief is a process.

Like any biological or psychological

event, it has a beginning, a middle, and

an end. And I do believe that being able

to orient in terms of where you are in

that process can be immensely

beneficial, not just for predicting how

long it's going to last, but in order to

conceptualize the person or animal that

you lost in a way that allows you to

best preserve their memory while

maintaining your own functional capacity

in life. Along those lines, I want to

point out that grief and depression,

while they can feel quite similar in

certain ways and have overlapping

symptomology, loss of appetite,

challenges sleeping,

crying in the middle of the day for no

apparent reason, etc. They are

distinctly different processes. As we

wade into this important topic, I'd like

to emphasize some of the common myths

and misunderstandings about grief. Some

of the myths and misunderstanding arrive

from the beautiful work of Elizabeth

Kubler Ross, a psychologist who wrote

the famous book on death and dying. The

different stages of grief very quickly

are denial, anger, bargaining,

depression, and acceptance. But

unfortunately, those five stages were

sort of taken to be gospel for a long

time. And we now know based on

neuroiming, based on more in-depth

psychological evaluation, and frankly

more researchers and clinicians moving

into this area and observing that while

much of what Kubler Ross described does

hold true, it's not always the case. How

do I know this? Well, I know this

because brain imaging studies in

involving what's called functional

magnetic resonance imaging, fMRI, in

which you can evaluate which brain areas

are more active than others according to

blood flow, which correlates with neural

activity and so forth, teaches us that

the brain areas that are associated with

motivation and craving and pursuit are

some of the primary brain areas and

circuits that are activated in states of

grief. We understand also on the basis

of brain imaging studies that in order

to understand grief, we have to

understand how attachments are

represented in our brain. And it turns

out that both attachments and the

breaking of attachments in healthy ways

are governed by three important what we

call dimensions. The three dimensions of

relating to someone or an animal or a

thing are space, time, and closeness.

And in order to illustrate each one and

how they work together to support

relationships and their involvement in

the grieving process, I'm going to tell

you about an experiment. The experiment

involves putting people into a brain

scanner that allows the researcher to

evaluate brain activity in different

areas. In fact, can look in a very

non-biased way, not make any predictions

about which brain areas are going to be

involved. And the experiment is the

following.

The person I should say the research

subject first sees images of things that

reside at different distances from one

another. So in one case it's a beach or

a parking lot with bowling balls set at

different distances from one another.

Their brain is imaged and as their brain

is imaged they see different pictures of

different scenes, the beach, the parking

lot, etc. bowling balls spaced in

different ways. Close together, far

apart, regularly spaced, non-regularly

spaced. When one does this sort of

experiment, you see a lot of brain areas

activated. Not surprisingly, the visual

cortex, the area of the brain that is

responsible for creating visual

perceptions, but also a brain area that

seems uniquely tuned to the distance

between you and the objects. We'll refer

to that measure, that dimension, as we

call it, as proximity. Then subjects

listen to tones. Those tones also are

spaced from one another. So it could be

something as simple as my hand uh

meeting the table top that I'm happen to

be sitting in front of. So it's

they image the brain. Of course, areas

of the brain they're associated with

auditory perception are active, not

surprisingly. But as they evaluate

different types of sounds and patterns

of sounds, for instance,

they can start to parse brain areas that

seem uniquely tuned to the spacing of

sounds independent of what sounds are

coming in. that is it becomes active

specifically in response to changes in

the spacing between sounds much in the

same way as they could identify brain

regions that were only activated when

there were changes in the distance

between objects such as the bowling

balls that I used in the previous

example and then the subjects saw a

different set of images that they saw

were of people and of faces and some of

the images that they saw were of

people's faces right up close and other

images were of people at a distance

where you could see the whole body of

the person. Now they also varied the

emotional relationship to those people.

That is they were able to get

photographs from these research subjects

lives. So they could show them pictures

of for instance their sister or some

random person off the street. They could

show them pictures of a parent or of a

neighbor or of a celebrity that's

well-known or of somebody that they

didn't know at all. So, they were able

to vary both the position of the person,

close or far, and they were able to vary

the emotional distance to the person,

which is this dimension that I'm

referring to as closeness, which is not

physical closeness, but how attached or

how well you know somebody. Now this is

may be sounding like a somewhat

complicated experiment but the takeaway

from this experiment is exquisitly

simple and exquisitly important. The

result was that in all three conditions

changes in the physical spacing of these

objects changes in the temporal that is

the time spacing of these sounds and

changes in the emotional distance

between the subject and different

people. the same brain area was uniquely

activated. And that brain area, it turns

out, is a brain area called the inferior

parietal lobule. The inferior parietal

lobule. Now, you don't need to know

where the inferior parietal lobule is.

In fact, you don't even need to know the

name of this brain area. What you do

need to know however if you want to

understand grief and how to move through

grief is that your map of people is not

a map of emotional closeness per se. It

is a map of emotional closeness what we

call attachment that is interwoven that

is braided in in a very intimate way

with your map of where they are in

physical space and where they are in

time. when you saw them last, when

you're likely to see them again, and if

you were to want to see them, how much

time it would take to reach them or for

them to reach you. Now, earlier I said

that one of the key functions of our

nervous system is to be able to make

predictions. And so it's somewhat

obvious but nonetheless important to

state and restate that one of the most

powerful aspects of our attachments to

people, animals, and things is our

ability to predict what it would take to

see them again and when we are going to

see them again. Now if all of this

sounds like a bunch of neuroscycho

babble parsing of the obvious, I'd

encourage you to suspend that belief for

the moment. Because if you understand

that all relationships are mapped in the

brain and body through these three

dimensions space, time and closeness or

proximity of space, proximity in time

and proximity of attachment, how close

or rich or bonded you are to someone.

Well, if you can understand that, then

it almost becomes obvious or at least it

becomes intuitive as to why after the

loss of somebody in particular a death

or the loss of an animal, this map has

to be reordered. Why? Because if we are

attached to someone or an animal at a

deep level, it is almost always on the

basis of a lot of what we call episodic

experience, a lot of episodic memories.

memories of things that happened.

Episodic memories are literally the

conscious recollection of your

experience of somebody or an animal or a

thing. And within that memory, you have

an understanding of what has happened

with them in association to you, what's

going on with them, where it happened,

when it happened. When somebody is taken

away from us for whatever reason,

episodic memories persist for some

period of time and they are still linked

to our feelings of attachment.

Grief is the process of uncoupling,

unbraiding and untangling that

relationship between where people are in

space, in time, and our attachment to

them. This is very, very hard to do. And

for some people, it's almost impossible

to do at least at the outset of grief.

When we have a rich catalog of

experiences with somebody or of them,

that memory bank is not just flushed out

the moment that we learn that they're no

longer with us. What happens is the

brain continues to make these

predictions that they will be in a

certain place or a certain time, right?

That they'll be in a certain time zone

or they'll walk in the door any moment.

All of those predictions still hold. The

neural activity continues. We call this

reverberatory activity. That explains

the yearning for and the desire to

interact. And yet, it's just beyond our

reach. Because once they're gone, our

brain still functions in a way. These

neural circuits still function in a way

that put us into an action state of

seeking them, looking for them in the

same location, expecting them to contact

us at whatever frequency that we were

used to hearing from them or that we

could reach out to them and reliably get

a response.

It is immensely disorienting. In other

words, to maintain a close attachment

and at the same time to not be able to

make predictions about where that

person, animal or thing is in space and

time. So with this current understanding

in mind, a few things start to become

obvious and entirely normal to us in the

best and most healthy sense of the word

normal. For instance, if you've lost

somebody or an animal or even a thing

that was vitally important to you, it

should make perfect sense to you as to

why you keep looking for that person.

Those expectations, those predictions

that the brain is making are entirely

normal because they are based on that

deep catalog of episodic memory that you

maintain about that person. Again, it's

simply an activation of this map that

involves closeness, space, and time. Not

surprisingly then the reordering of that

map that's required in order to move

through the grieving process is going to

involve some remapping. Psychologists

and neuroscientists generally agree that

the best way to approach moving through

grief is actually to remap these

dimensions while maintaining the close

sense of attachment to the person by not

in any way trying to undermine the

intensity of the attachment or how

important it was to you. So we'll now

talk about how that process works and

the different entry points as they're

called to engaging in that process.

These are tools gleaned from the

research psychology, the clinical

psychology, and the neuroscience

literature. The first one involves the

acknowledgement and really the

understanding that you don't want to

disengage or dismantle your real

attachment to someone, an animal, or a

thing. That's a real thing. And there is

actually no adaptive reason to try and

persuade yourself or numb yourself or

somehow avoid the thinking of just how

much they meant to you.

What is important however is that you

make some effort to shift your mindset

and your understanding of that person in

a way that holds in mind that yes indeed

the attachment is very real and in some

cases is very very intense but is now

going to be uncoupled from the other two

dimensions of the map namely space and

time. So it's a complicated process you

can imagine but you really want to hold

and register two things at once. One way

to do this is to set aside a dedicated

period of time of maybe five or 10,

maybe even as much as 30 minutes in

which you are going to feel deeply into

your closeness and your attachment to

that person, animal, or thing. But you

are consciously going to try and prevent

yourself from thinking about a couple of

categories of things. First of all, you

want to actively try and disengage from

any attempt to engage in what's called

counterfactual thinking, the whatifs.

What if I had called them a day earlier?

What if they had taken a different route

home? What if I had taken a different

route home?

These counterfactual modes of thinking

are an infinite landscape of possibility

and they are very closely tied to guilt.

So as an infinite space, it's a very

precarious one. And it will not allow

you to uncouple that intense emotional

attachment that I'm telling you is

actually vital to hold on to from that

catalog of episodic memory that you've

established. In fact, it's going to

strengthen those bonds. So in this

dedicated five or 10 or 30 whatever

period of time you can tolerate and

maintain focus. The idea is to think

about your attachment in a rich way and

to perhaps even experience that in your

brain and body. This tool if you will of

dedicated blocks of time for really

spending some effort and it is indeed

effort to access the emotional

connection while starting to uncouple

the other nodes of the map as it were is

something that is hard. But in terms of

the options one has in order to deal

with grief, it is indeed the most

adaptive way to go about it. Now, I'd

like to consider why two people, both

who are intensely attached to a person

that is no longer there, can experience

the grief of the loss of that person in

such different ways. We don't really

know how other people feel. There's no

clear way of knowing that the expression

someone else has or whether or not

they're crying or not or their body

language really represents how they feel

inside. So that is important to keep in

mind. Nonetheless, there does seem to be

a sort of a split among people and

indeed among animals as well, even

within a species in terms of how

intensely they feel the yearning aspect

of grief. And it appears based on a

number of different lines of evidence

that that relates to this molecule that

some of you have probably heard of which

is oxytocin. Oxytocin is a

hormone/eptide. A peptide just means a

protein, generally a small protein. And

a hormone is generally something that

functions at numerous locations in the

body to impact numerous organs and areas

of the brain. Oxytocin

has a variety of roles in the brain and

body. It's involved in milk let down

during lactation. It's involved in pair

bonding both in males and females. It's

involved in bonding of parent to child

and indeed between romantic partners etc

etc. Let's talk about some of the animal

models that inform us about the

potential roles of oxytocin in the

grieving process.

There's a species of animal called the

prairie v. And believe it or not, the

prairie v has been studied fairly

extensively by neuroscience and

psychology researchers. Prairie vos are

one species of animal, but depending on

where they live, you find that some

prairie vos are monogamous, that is,

they mate with the same prairie vole for

life. They raise litters of little

prairie bowls, and other prairie vos

generally that live in different

locations in the wild are non-

monogamous, sometimes called polygamous.

The neurochemical and circuit basis for

this monogamy versus non- monogamy are

quite interesting. However, in the

context of grief and attachment, the

prairie bowl have taught us a lot. And

they've taught us a lot through the

following experiment. Take two prairie

vos that are coupled up. So, these would

be monogous prairie bowls that have

established a coupleum.

I guess you would call that a prairie

volum. Anyway, put them in a cage

together. They mate together. They raise

young together. And then you separate

them. You literally put a physical

barrier between the two of them. And you

can evaluate how strongly one prairie

bowl will work to get access to the

other prairie bowl. And what you observe

is that the monogous prairie vos will

work very hard to get back to their

mate. But the non- monogamous prairie

will not work as hard to access a

prairie vole partner. This turns out to

be interesting when you start to explore

the patterns of so-called oxytocin

receptors in the brain. To make a long

story short and to also bridge to the

human literature,

it turns out that the monogamous prairie

bowls have far more oxytocin receptors

in this brain area that I mentioned

earlier, the nucleus encumbent. And

again to remind you, the nucleus

encumbent is the brain area associated

with motivation, craving, and pursuit.

So it's as if the monogous prairie vos

have a capacity to link the attachment

circuitry and the molecules of

attachment in this case oxytocin to

reward pathways and to motivational

pathways. So in other words non-

monogamous prairie seem to have less

yearning for attachment overall at least

to a single individual prairie bowl. And

when we look at the human literature in

terms of oxytocin receptor expression

and brain imaging experiments and so on,

what you find is the same that people

that experience intense grief and a deep

yearning and a motivation to reconnect

with the person, animal or thing that is

lost in many cases have heightened

levels of oxytocin specifically or I

should say oxytocin receptors to be

exact specifically within the brain

regions associated ated with craving and

pursuit. So for those of you that find

yourself in this kind of stuck mode,

this persistence of trying to reach into

the past or wishful thinking, this um

counterfactual thinking, the yearning,

the desire and the impulsivity,

the kind of leaning in and at a almost

reflexive way to try and access that

person again, to text them, to want to

hear from them could, and I have to

highlight, could reflect the fact that

you just so happen to have more oxytocin

receptor or maybe more oxytocin overall

in this brain area that's associated

with motivation and pursuit does not

necessarily mean that you are more

capable of attachment than people who

move through grief more quickly and I

should say that people move through

grief at different rates even if two

people lost the same person or same

animal people move through this at

different rates and some of that is no

doubt psychological but some of it no

doubt is also neurochemical and bi

biological. I'd like to take a moment

and explore this idea that allowing

ourselves to really feel the attachment

to somebody can accelerate or at least

support adaptive transitioning through

grief. There's a really wonderful study

that on the face of it appears to be a

what we call negative result. A negative

result is when a hypothesis is posed and

then turns out the hypothesis is not

true. But as is the case with so many

interesting scientific findings, often

when there's a negative result, there's

a more interesting result nested in that

negative outcome. And this is the case

in a particular paper I'll share with

you now. This is a paper published in

the journal biological psychology. And

again, the title is posed as a question

which is emotional disclosure for whom?

A study of veagal tone in bereavement.

What this study explored was whether or

not written disclosure of the emotional

connection to somebody that was lost

would be effective as a way for people

to move through the grieving process.

The study also explored the so-called

vagus nerve. The vagus nerve is an

extensive nerve pathway that is

birectional between brain and body. So

brain to body and body to brain. The way

to think about it in terms of what we're

going to talk about now is heart rate

and heart rate variability. The vagus

nerve is generally associated with

parasympathetic functions and has the

capacity to slow down our heart rate in

particular by exhales and just simply

because of the movement of the diaphragm

and its relationship to the heart and

the thoracic cavity. Exhales result in

slowing down of the heart rate. This is

what we call an increased veagal tone.

Now in this study what they did is they

had people and I should say it was 35

participants go through a writing

exercise for a period of weeks and there

were two different groups. One group was

in the so-called written disclosure

group. What they did is they on day one

they would write about what happened

when a loved one died and indeed they

used people who had experienced real

loss. And so they were asked to talk

about and write about their deepest

emotions and thoughts about it, memories

of their loved one. Very intense stuff

if you think about it. If they're in the

immediate period of having lost someone,

then they actually were asked to write a

letter to the person that they lost. The

other group was a so-called control

group where they were simply told to

write about how they use their time. So

an emotionally kind of empty writing

exercise, if you will. They describe

what they would do today after they woke

up, etc. No, no heavy emotional content

and so on. What I didn't tell you thus

far is why they had them do this

exercise at all. They had them do this

exercise because many of the effective

practices for moving through grief

involve, as I mentioned earlier, getting

close to and actually deliberately

experiencing the attachment that one has

to that person that was lost. Not

distracting oneself, not getting into

this counterfactual thinking, the what

if, what if, what if, but rather

thinking about or in this case writing

about the real attachment. And so the

the initial idea was if people write

about this attachment that they're going

to experience this attachment and that

will serve them in some or many ways in

terms of moving through grief. And that

wasn't what they found. They found no

difference between the two groups until

they explored who had higher veagal

tone, who had a greater degree of

so-called respiratory sinus arrhythmia.

In other words, who was able to modulate

their state using their breathing and

their body. And what they discovered was

that a subset of individuals who had a

high degree of veagal tone seemed to get

more benefit from this writing type

exercise. Now this is one study and I

would consider it fairly preliminary

with 35 subjects although you know it's

a study unto itself and I think a quite

nice one and it really set the stage for

a number of other studies that followed

from this group and other groups that

really point to the fact that yes indeed

accessing these states of emotionality

by writing or thinking about somebody is

quite powerful in terms of engaging the

bodily states and the mind states

associated with the attachment and that

is very beneficial. for moving through

grief. That is very beneficial for

sensing the attachment. And now it makes

perfect sense as to why some people

would benefit from that sort of practice

more than others because some people are

able to access more real somatic

feelings of attachment by writing about

the attachment or by thinking about it

than others. Because again what this

paper really points to and set off a

number of other investigations related

to is that for those that can really

feel the relationship between breathing,

heart rate, what we call veagal tone.

Well, those people are going to be in a

better position to move through grief

not because they are disengaging from

the feelings of attachment but because

they are better able to access those

feelings of attachment. So what this

relates to, of course, is that

tripartite map, that threepart map that

we talked about earlier, that

representation of space, where things

are, where the person is, where their

belongings are, where their car is,

where their bicycle is, time, when you

were expecting to see them on a regular

basis, when they would call, when they

would come home from work, etc. And that

third node or that third dimension of

attachment, which is literally

attachment and closeness. Now, I'd like

to take a moment and consider some of

the tools that you can access that

support healthy transitioning through

grief. And these are tools distinct from

that neural map, that space, time,

closeness, attachment map that we were

talking about before. Rather, it's

important to remind ourselves that

everything exists in a context of our

baseline physiology. And I'm certainly

not going to be the first or the last to

tell you that everything in life,

learning, relationships with people that

are still around.

Our health in every way, immune system,

etc., function far better when we're

sleeping really well. And when we are

generally awake during the daytime and

asleep at night, there's a particular

feature to our dural and dial meaning

the opposite of nocturnal. Our dal

pattern of the release of a hormone

called cortisol. It's linked to our

increase in temperature rhythms and can

further increase our temperature which

leads to waking and so on. The typical

pattern of cortisol in a healthy

individual and we really can say

physically and emotionally healthy

individual is that cortisol is going to

be somewhat high right around waking and

then is going to be highest as it ever

will be in the 24-hour period about 45

minutes post waking. Not exactly 45

minutes, but about 45 minutes. And then

it will drop gradually such that by

about 4 pm in the afternoon, which is

actually when body temperature tends to

start to drop as well. Cortisol tends to

be very low and then remains low in a

healthy individual such that at 900 p.m.

it's very low and throughout the night

as we sleep it's very low. There's a

very interesting paper exploring the

relationship between cortisol rhythms

and grieving. in particular complicated

versus non-complicated grieving. Again,

complicated grieving being the form of

grieving that reflects a immense

challenge of people moving through the

grieving process such that it really

needs to be dealt with. Right? Again,

grieving is healthy, but complicated

grieving is a prolonged grieving and has

other dimensions as well. Hence the name

complicated. The title of this paper is

dal cortisol in complicated and

non-complicated grief slope differences

across the day. And the figure to orient

to in this paper if you do decide to

check it out is figure one which

beautifully shows or I should say very

clearly shows that when you compare the

cortisol levels between people

experiencing complicated grieving versus

non-complicated grieving. What you find

is the 4pm and 900 p.m. cortisol levels

are significantly higher than they are

in the non-complicated grieving group.

This raises a very interesting idea. We

arrive at a scenario where it makes very

good sense to think about modulating

that is controlling the foundation of

your life in a way that establishes

cortisol rhythms and sleep patterns and

patterns of autonomic arousal and

catakolamine release that position you

to navigate the grief process in the

best possible way. If you are somebody

who is heading into grief or is

challenged with grief, getting adequate

sleep at night and establishing as

normal a pattern of cortisol as possible

is going to be very important. And

there's a very simple straightforward

way to do this. And I apologize to the

listeners of this podcast in advance if

I sound like a repeating record, but the

most powerful way to do this is to view

sunlight very close to waking. It does

not have to be right at sunrise, but

when you get up in the morning, if the

sun isn't out, please turn on as many

bright lights as possible in your

environment. Why do I say this thing

about sunlight over and over and over

again? Well, having an early day

cortisol peak and a very low cortisol

level late in the day, 4 p.m. and 9:00

p.m., is immensely beneficial. It's

reflects a properly regulated autonomic

nervous system. It means being alert

during the day and your ability to sleep

at night isite tightly correlated to

this viewing of sunlight in the morning.

If you have additional questions about

this or these protocols, please see our

mastering sleep episode also at

hubermanlab.com. So, what are the tools

that we can think about using in terms

of healthy adaptive moving through

grief, trying to avoid complicated grief

and prolonged grief disorders? Clearly,

it's a value to dedicate some period of

time, perhaps every day, perhaps every

other day, depending on your capacity

and schedule.

These could be periods of time ranging

anywhere from 5 to 45 minutes, maybe

longer. These blocks of time would be

appropriately described as rational

grieving. Rational grieving is a clear

acceptance of the new reality that the

person, animal, or thing no longer

exists in the same space-time

dimensionality that we knew them before

and yet holding on to and anchoring to

the attachment that we had. This is

really anchoring to the depth and the

intensity of the attachment that existed

as a way to, for lack of a better way to

put it, push off from those episodic

memories, to distance ourselves from

them because those episodic memories are

the ones that lead us to look for the

person in our current reality. And

assuming this is a real and complete

loss, those sorts of expectations are

maladaptive. They do not serve us well.

The second aspect of this is to

understand that the node of the map, the

component of the neural map that you're

anchoring to is a very real component of

you. These are literally cells that

represent the depth of attachment. We

talked a moment ago about the importance

of accessing quality sleep on a regular

basis. There again a rich array of tools

to do that in the mastering sleep

episode. And again highlighting the

importance of sleep for not just emotion

regulation and autonomic control which

is so vital but also for making sure

that neuroplasticity takes place because

again neuroplasticity is a two-part

process. There's the triggering of the

plasticity which in the case of the

things we're talking about today will be

naturally activated by the practice of a

dedicated focusing on the attachment

feeling the attachment to the person

maybe even writing about the attachment

to the person as was described in that

previous study. but also just the

plasticity is triggered by the mere loss

of that person, the intensity of that

experience. But neuroplasticity, the

literal rewiring of connections occurs

during deep sleep and in what I call

non-sleep deep rest or NSDR. And you can

find NSDR scripts. These are short

behavioral protocols that you do for 10

to 30 minutes at some point throughout

the day, maybe even multiple times

through day that have been shown to

accelerate neuroplasticity. So having a

such a practice can be very useful and

understand that it involves some

cognitive work. We have to hold on to

the attachment and imagine and feel as

much as we can the attachment while also

being extremely rationally grounded and

trying to not try to hold on to the past

trying to not anticipate the person

walking in the room. This is very hard

because when we think about the

attachment, the attachment tends to drag

with it those episodic memories, that

rich catalog of experiences. And we

talked about preparing ourselves for

grief. We can prepare ourselves to

grieve more adaptively by regulating the

level of catakolamines, in particular

epinephrine, and tools such as the one

found in our mastering stress episode

and tools of the sort that we talked

about today, increasing that veagal tone

by actively building up the relationship

between exhales and slowing down of the

heart rate, so-called respiratory sinus

arhythmia. Those things can be very

useful tools. And of course, I want to

restate again, it is often important to

access a trained professional

psychologist or psychiatrist or both or

bereavement group or or all of the above

in order to get the proper support for

grieving. I like to think that the tools

that we've talked about today would be

not only compatible but would be

complimentary to the sorts of approaches

that they take. And I would encourage

you to not lean away from but rather to

lean into the building of those episodic

memories to build up a richer and richer

set of experiences and emotional

attachments. Because while the process

of grieving is in direct relation to how

close we are attached to people, there

are ways to move through it. And of

course, it is the depth of our

attachments and the number and the depth

of meaning of experiences that we share

with others and with animals that makes

life so rich and worth living. So, I

just want to take a moment and say thank

you for being willing to explore this

rather complicated and sometimes

extremely challenging thing that we call

grief from the perspective or through

the lens of neuroscience and psychology.

And last, but certainly not least, thank

you for your interest in science.